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“OCCULTURE”

AND ALTERNATIVE FORMS


OF RELIGIOSITY
IN CONTEMPORARY AZERBAIJAN

Adeline BRAUX

Research and Analyses – No. 39 – March 2017

URL : http://religion.info/pdf/2017_03_alternative_religiosity_Azerbaijan.pdf

© 2017 Adeline Braux


Abstract
Analysing the current phenomena of alternative religiosities through a post-Soviet lens
may be productive in the Azerbaijani context, given the so-called “religious revival”
experienced by the countries of the former Soviet Union. However, these clusters of
beliefs and practices do not cohere into a widely accepted system, therefore it is
difficult to analyse them within the general framework of the theory of religion. Yet they
should not be regarded as being irrelevant to religiosity, in that they reflect a
relationship to supernatural and transcendental forces that is articulated in everyday
life. In practice, the development of alternative religious practices in Azerbaijan should
be interpreted in a context characterised by the existence of bridges between
traditional practices and new forms of religion-related activities, and the importance of
the circulation of knowledge and people from Soviet Russia before 1991 and currently
within a space stretching from Russia to Turkey, against the background of the
increased supply of and demand for alternative services related to “the curing of body
and soul”, together with a growing individualisation of religious practices. This article
focuses on three specific groups/areas in Azerbaijan: ekstrasensy and
parapsychologists, popular “occulture”, and the Hare Krishna community.
Keywords: Azerbaijan, alternative religiosities, occulture, parapsychology, psychics,
ekstrasensy

Introduction1

An extremely popular TV programme in the post-Soviet space in the last


ten years has been “The Clash of Ekstrasensy” (Bitva ekstrasensov in Russian),
modelled on the British reality show The Psychic Challenge. In the show, a range
of people engaged in so-called extrasensory activities are assigned various
challenges and compete with one another. The Russian version has gained the
most attention; however, local variants can also be found, including in
Azerbaijan.2 Being a finalist – or even just a participant – in the show has
become a major commercial boon for some ekstrasensy in Azerbaijan (and

1 Research for this publication was made possible through financial support from the French National

Research Agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) within the programme “New Religiosities in
Turkey: Reenchantment in a Secularized Muslim Country?” (ANR-13-FRAL-0006, acronym
NEORELIGITUR).

2 The Russian version of the programme was first accessible via cable and satellite, then a local version

started being broadcast on Azerbaijani Space TV under the name Ekstrahiss, translated into Azerbaijani
from the Russian.

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elsewhere).3 The concept of ekstrasensy refers to a wide spectrum of activities
that may range from fortune telling, astrology, clairvoyance or divination to
parapsychology, magic, healing, shamanic powers, para-sciences or traditional
medicine. For all the “bizarre”, “funny”, or “scary” character these activities may
take on for outsiders, they are not the result of the mere offering of services by
charlatans. They also have their public, and in some sense meet a demand for
spiritual services.

These clusters of beliefs and practices lack the strong structures and
authorities of traditional religious organisations, since they neither rely on a
community of believers nor cohere into a widely accepted system. Thus, it is
difficult to analyse them within the general framework of the theory of religion.
Yet they should not be regarded as being irrelevant to religiosity (in terms of
faith experienced on a daily basis) in that they reflect a relationship to
supernatural and transcendental forces that is articulated in everyday life, but
outside the usual realm of the sacred. Instead, what seems to best describe them
is the term “occulture”, as Partridge uses it to describe the contemporary
alternative religious milieu in the West.4 This approach allows for greater
flexibility in analysing contemporary nebulous forms of spirituality, not least in
the post-Soviet space, where their development went hand in hand with
democratisation and secularisation, with the latter term being used in the sense
of faith becoming an individual/private matter. For Roy (2008: 21; 279),
secularisation and religious revival are closely linked, because the former is a
direct consequence of the latter and appears as a consequence of globalisation,
or rather entry into globalisation from a post-Soviet perspective.

3 Ekstrasensy (the plural of ekstrasens) are not the same as the “psychics” known in the West due to the

supposedly different principles of their work (Belyaev, 2012: 262). Basically, they practice bio-field
healing. In order to retain the difference in the text, I will retain the Russian terms ekstrasens/
ekstrasensy – a popular notion that subsumes both extrasensory powers (senses beyond the realm of
science) and extrasensory activities (which enable practitioners to act on the environment and other
people by means of “unusual powers”) (V.I. Kharitonova, cited in Lindquist, 2006: 52).

4 Partridge defines occulture as “a vast spectrum of beliefs and practices sourced by Eastern spirituality,

paganism, spiritualism, theosophy, alternative sciences and medicine, popular psychology, and a wide
range of beliefs awakening out of general interest in the paranormal, huge variety of speculations, a
good deal of it directly contradictory” (2004: 4; see also pp. 63–64).

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If Azerbaijani society is wavering between different influences, it also
experiences its own dynamics that should not be underestimated. As a result,
even in Soviet times, long-established ties with Russian occult circles allowed
for the circulation of knowledge that intermingled with local Azerbaijani
elements. At the same time, the country currently follows global trends in terms
of the increased offer of and demand for services related to “the curing of body
and soul”, against the background of a growing individualisation of religious
practices.

This article therefore aims to provide an overview of some alternative


forms of religiosity in Azerbaijan. While attempting to identify various milieus,
we will see that they often overlap, and that any attempt to lay down clear
boundaries between people and practices is inappropriate. Indeed, a common
feature among new forms of religiosity, religions and sects is their blurred
frontiers (Roy, 2008: 37). The article focuses on three specific groups and areas,
namely ekstrasensy and parapsychologists, popular “occulture”, and the Hare
Krishna community (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or
ISKCON).5 It will contend that, regardless of the superficial qualities or strong
commitment of the people concerned, the social significance of these practices
in Azerbaijan goes well beyond the simple numerical presence of the followers
of such practices in the country. As such, these practices need to be taken into
account and understood.

When Soviet occulture meets local peculiarities, and vice versa

The emergence or strengthening of new forms of religiosity is often


associated with periods of anxiety and chaos. Basically, what is labelled
occultism, esotericism, or alternative or heterodox religiosity is primarily a way
of coping with life for a population that is searching for meaning (Belyaev, 2012:
259). Of the people I met during my fieldwork, many of their biographies
intersected with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, not only had the

5 If we draw on recent literature, of the three categories discussed in this article, only ISKCON qualifies

as a New Religious Movement (Bromley, 2012: 16). Even if it is a structured movement and its followers
tend to use a more dogmatic discourse than the followers of non-structured networks of alternative
religiosity, ISKCON is evolving in interaction with the occult nebula (Mayer, 1993: 51).

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lives they had been living so far changed dramatically, but also the whole
economic, social, and mental framework that they had been accustomed to
disappeared overnight, leading to a general “degradation” (degradatsija in
Russian), as people in the former Soviet Union often describe it. Of course, this
should not be seen as the sole explanation for the phenomena described in this
article. Yet it is undoubtedly a crucial factor, together with the space left empty
by the rapid rejection of Marxist doctrines and the lack of “rational channels of
agency” that still characterises several post-Soviet countries ruled by
authoritarian political regimes and experiencing insecurity in the most vital
sectors of everyday life (Lindquist, 2006: 2, 9).

Despite the official policy of atheism, and notwithstanding harsh anti-


religious campaigns, religion as a system of belief had not disappeared during
Soviet times, nor had popular beliefs and habits. This is true throughout the
countries of the former Soviet Union, and impacts post-socialist spiritualism in
various ways. In Azerbaijan, it is reflected in the persistence of local practices
that are still strongly associated with autochthonous forms of religiosity and
spirituality, often in relation to healing practices. Although they do not form the
core of this paper, these practices need to be mentioned, since most of the
people who offer alternative spiritual services directly source their practices and
knowledge from this heritage.

For example, a common feature of the Eurasian space is the importance of


shrines, whatever the religion concerned. In the socialist world these places of
worship (entire complexes, a grave, or simply a tree or some stones) had an
additional peculiarity: they were the last places of worship after other religious
buildings had been destroyed (Grant, 2011: 654). In Azerbaijan, they are
randomly called pir,6 ziyaretgah,7 or, in the villages, ojak. Individual or collective
visits to these places of worship are part and parcel of Azerbaijani social life
(Darieva, 2016: 207). An interesting point is that, according to proponents of an
orthodox version of Islam, they are mere charlatan practices (Darieva, 2016:

6 Which refers to a saintly person or, by association, to the place where he/she is buried.

7 From ziyaret meaning “visit”.

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208; Obadia, 2013: 161), just like the alternative religious practices analysed in
this article.

But nonetheless, pirs still have a very strong practical and symbolic
meaning in Azerbaijan. This certainly explains why some practitioners (e.g. an
informant who is a parapsychologist – see next section) claim a form of linkage
to these places and people. Traditional healers are also still very popular in
Azerbaijan, both in urban and rural areas, even if the latter tend to have more of
such healers. Two figures emerge in the Azerbaijani context, namely the çöpçü8
(plural çöpler) and çıldaqcı.9 A çöpçü is a person, usually a woman, who helps
young children expel small particles (plural çöpler) caught in their throats. A
çıldaqcı is a person who helps people get rid of their fears. A typical healing
session would would have the healer take a cotton or a mere rag, put it on fire,
and then wrap a needle with it to touch precise nerve points on the body to rid
the patient/client of their fear. The forces responsible for the fear would then
leave the body. This is a basic magical method that works on the principle of
fighting harm with harm (Bünyadov et al., 2007: 323). Both the çöpçü and
çıldaqcı are strongly associated with Baku and the Absheron Peninsula around
it, although they are also to be found in other Azerbaijani regions. As we shall
see below, parapsychologists in Baku often claim a familial or symbolic
parentage linking them with these traditional healers, while several informants
referred to such healers as a rural and popular version of psychologists.

The maintenance of these folk practices, combined with some remnants


of established religions, occultism, and indigenous religions, paved the way for
the opening up of alternative religious spaces in the post-Soviet period (Shterin,
2012: 287). In addition, Soviet modernisation and state atheism paradoxically
created conditions for the emergence of new forms of religiosity. Especially from
the 1960s, the Khrushchev “thaw” enabled the development of a wide range of
activities – some of which were promoted by the authorities – that would be
considered to belong to the realm of “‘occulture’” in the West. Moscow, Leningrad
– and, more broadly, Russia – played a major role as the centres for these

8 Pronounced “chepchu”.

9 Pronounced “childarji”.

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activities, and to a large extent this is still the case today. The late 1960s and
1970s were even a period of expansion, sometimes supported by the state itself,
with the humanities leaning towards alignment with “hard sciences”. Even the
KGB played a major part in these developments. While charismatic individuals,
circles and sects emerged in Moscow, Leningrad, and other cities of Soviet
Russia, the academic system was given the means to develop disciplines and
conduct experiments that would simply have been dismissed in the West
(Menzel, 2012: 151). But this was not public and remained limited to small
circles. Topics such as UFOs, yoga, and parapsychology were discussed in
journals and magazines throughout the Soviet period, but only after 1988 did
they start to be debated without the scorn and prejudice they were treated with
previously (Belyaev, 2012: 259). For its part, political liberalisation in the 1980s
led to an exponential increase in the number of healers (tseliteli in Russian),
magicians (magi) and astrologers (gadal'shiki) (Belyaev, 2012: 260). Television
played a major role in popularising esoteric knowledge and skills; for instance,
the Ukrainian psychologist, hypnotherapist and medical doctor Anatoli
Kashpirovskiy gained country-wide fame with his hypnosis sessions: during
“healing sessions” he would hypnotise whole stadiums of people (Lindquist,
2006: 35–36).

Several academic institutes were at the forefront of the transmission of


academic knowledge, such as the institutes for the study of eastern religions
and philosophy at the Moscow and Leningrad universities, as well as the
departments of Indology and Egyptology at the latter, and the Institute of Asian
and African Countries at the former (Menzel, 2012: 155). Psychology and
psychoanalysis as “hotbeds of heterodox belief systems” (Menzel, 2012: 160)
were often a professional entry route for new practitioners and believers. During
my fieldwork in Baku I came across a psychologist who had studied in the
Department of Philosophy at Leningrad University who recounted how with her
university friends she was given lectures on psychology or parapsychology and
related disciplines. She now works at the Ministry of Sports of the Republic of
Azerbaijan as a psychologist (or “coach”) for athletes after working for some
years in Istanbul in a centre for bio-energy10 and parapsychology that she had

10 Basically, “bio-energy” (bioenergetika in Russian) deals with the rebalancing of people’s energy.

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opened with her sister, who was herself a specialist in bio-energy now living in
the United States. Similarly, a member of the Hare Krishna community since
1991 described the long and demanding training she imposed on herself: a
graduate of the Institute of Psychology at Lomonosov University in Moscow, she
undertook the study of the three monotheisms and the Kabbalah, “[propagating]
the Torah among the Jews of Krasnaya Sloboda”,11 with various “specialists” (e.g.
from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and India) in astrology. Finally, she started her work
as an ekstrasens and parapsychologist. In a way that was typical of such
practitioners, she insisted that, unlike a physician, she had to know all these
sciences in order to be able to “cure souls”. She had heard of the Hare Krishna
movement from a TV advertisement she saw while watching one of
Kashpirovskiy’s healing sessions (see above).

A logical consequence of this state of affairs in both Russia and


Azerbaijan is the considerable degree of porosity between the esoteric and
academic milieus. This is partly due to the Soviet heritage, as was indicated
earlier, since what is perceived as a pseudo-science in the West was actually
taught and studied as a science in the former Soviet Union. This is also linked to
the importance of the elite in the transmission of esoteric and heterodox
knowledge in both Russia (Menzel, 2012: 184) and Azerbaijan. This explains the
presence of university professors, academics and researchers at seminars on
personal development, e.g. the healer Boris Zolotov, who was a member of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences, or Vyacheslav Bronnikov in the late 1990s, whose
patients had been examined at the Institute for Brain Research in St Petersburg,
which is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Belyaev, 2012: 263–64). In
newspapers advertising healing or astrological services in Azerbaijan, some
advertisements referred to a practitioner working as a “sociologist at the
National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan” (this institution still exists as
such).

Whether such claims are true or not, they may have a dual significance:
some people fail to make an adequate living despite their high levels of
education in a country where the salaries of specialists in the social sciences are

11 A village in the Guba area (northern Azerbaijan) populated mainly by mountain Jews.

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miserable and their subjects of research (sociology, anthropology, ethnography,
etc.) are regarded as irrelevant; while, at the same time, presenting oneself as a
member of the Academy of Sciences might seem prestigious to potential clients
and therefore constitutes a potential advantage in the marketing of one's know-
how. Consequently, magic, as a part of the service sector, also offers alternative
sources of income for people who were severely hit by the post-socialist
changes, which is certainly the case for academics (Lindquist, 2006: 23).
Moreover, in Azerbaijan, as in Russia, “what intensified significantly after the
collapse of the Soviet Union was not the interest in esoteric knowledge as such,
but merely the scope of this interest and the intense communication of this
knowledge to broad groups of the general population” (Belyaev, 2012: 266), as
we shall see in the next section.

Ekstrasensy and parapsychologists

TV programmes like The Clash of Ekstrasensy have been a way of


popularising on a larger scale activities and beliefs that were not very familiar to
the post-Soviet masses, but rather confined for the most part to elite circles.
Participating in such competitions has become a marketing strategy and an
advertising channel for some ekstrasensy. It is also a means of disseminating
and trivialising interventions that may appear as unusual or “bizarre” to part of
the population. The subsequent success of several Azerbaijanis or Bakuvians12
was based on their participation in such programmes, e.g. Khayal Alekperov,
who first won a similar contest in Azerbaijan and was then invited to participate
in the first Ukrainian version, the final of which he won in 2012. Ziraddin
Rzayev, who was one of the finalists of the sixth season (2009), now lives and
works as an ekstrasens in Moscow.

But possibly the best example of an excellent return on investment on a


family level after appearing on the show is Galina Baghirova, who was a finalist
in the eighth season (2010) of the Russian version. A “clairvoyant,
cosmoenergetic, ekstrasens, medium, TV moderator and author of the book The

12 Inhabitants of Baku.

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Power of Ekstrasensy”,13 she was born in Baku in 1958 and is of Azeri and Tatar
descent. Her biography also indicates some Persian roots. She draws her
extrasensory inheritance from her maternal grandmother, who was a well-
known magician, and her paternal grandfather, who was a clairvoyant
(yasnovidyashiy in Russian). She first graduated from Baku State University and
worked as an actress, then she married and subsequently gave birth to two
children (a boy and girl), but, as she claims to have predicted, she became a
widow after her husband’s death a few years later. At that time she claims to
have seen in a dream a Bulgarian clairvoyant who was very well known in the
post-Soviet space, Vanga, holding in her hands some pieces of sugar, which form
Baghirova’s preferred symbol. Vanga, she says, predicted that some changes
would occur in her life that would lead to her helping other people.14 This is
basically how she started her work. In 1988 Baghirova started advertising in
newspapers; below is a complete advertisement published in the advertising
newspaper Birzha:15
Clairvoyant-parapsychologist Galina Baghirova will really help you: prognosis
on fate (past, present, past), elimination of black influences, provision of
success in all spheres of life, business prognosis, answers to any questions
related to daily issues, and everything about the person you are interested in.
Search for missing persons,16 she will help you to see flats and offices. She
works on pictures and all crystal sugars. She will show you how not to make
mistakes. If you are searching for someone, she will tell you where to find him/
her.

13 <http://galina-Baghirova.ru/experts.php>, accessed 29 February 2016. Her personal page also used to

present her as a parapsychologist: the term is now part of her centre’s name (Moscow Centre of
Parapsychology and Hypnosis). Baghirova’s website has been updated several times, not least because,
as is stated on the first page, the website had been attacked several times by fraudsters who tried to use
her name to make money.

14 <http://galina-Baghirova.ru/>, accessed 29 February 2016.

15 Birja (stock exchange) was first published in 1990 and contains a wide range of advertisements to

buy/sell goods and services in a number of sectors (housing, cars, various objects, nursing, medical
services, etc.). These advertisements appear predominantly in Russian.

16 Missing persons are a recurring issue in the former Soviet Union, especially in Russia: due to the huge

distances over which the country is spread, it is a fairly frequent occurrence for people to disappear
overnight. One of the challenges of The Clash of Ekstrasensy was that of finding missing persons. Even
the police would sometimes resort to using an ekstrasens.

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Baghirova continued to
place advertisements in this
newspaper until the mid-2000s,
after which they stopped. She
eventually established the Centre
of Parapsychology and the Six
Senses of Ekstrasensor y
Perception (Tsentr parapsikholigiy
i sverkhchuvstvennogovospriatija
6 chuvstv in Russian) in Moscow,
based on the principle that “God
gave us five organic senses, but Galina Baghirova.
there is an additional one, which
helps see and hear what can’t be seen and heard by others” (the so-called “third
eye”). The centre has been renamed the Moscow Centre of Parapsychology and
Hypnosis. Baghirova and her son Isa offer training at the centre (“All magic in
one month: parapsychology, clairvoyance, development of extrasensory
faculties, trance methods, etc.”), as well as online training. She also provides
services to clients at the centre that deal with a variety of issues (money and
business; personal, psychological and medical problems; exams; children’s
sleeping problems; phobias; curses; witchcraft; etc.), and uses various methods
to deal with them, including “ancient methods with fire and special herbs, seeds
and aromas”.17 Feng shui is also used to deal with housing issues. The centre is a
family enterprise since her son, Isa Baghirov, a self-proclaimed
“parapsychologist and mentalist”,18 is also a member of the “specialists team”.
Her daughter Leyla, once a specialist who “masters the secret of ancient Persian
gypsy clairvoyance”,19 seems to have given up these activities in 2015.

Although they do not live and work in Azerbaijan, Baghirova and her son
are fairly well known in Baku, especially among Russian-speaking circles. They

17 <http://galina-Baghirova.ru/lichniy_priyom_msk.php>, accessed 29 February 2016.

18 <http://isa-Baghirov.ru/obo-mne>, accessed 29 February 2016.

19 According to the information on her mother’s website before it was updated.

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are regularly interviewed by newspapers, notably the main Russian-language
online newspaper Ekho. In the edition of 5 March 2016, Baghirova predicted,
among other things, a possible third devaluation of the manat (Azerbaijan’s
national currency).20 In an interview with the same newspaper in 2014,21 her
son was was asked why thus far the “science of feng shui” was not very popular
in Azerbaijan. Isa gave the following answer: “Our people [Azerbaijanis] have
another world vision, other activities and goals. They prefer daily banality and
rarely occupy themselves with spiritual development.” Various practitioners
presented the same argument to me on several occasions. However, one of the
main reasons for this lack of interest might be much more trivial: offering
parapsychology, feng shui, and related services has better financial prospects in
Moscow than in Baku, not least because the market is much more promising in
the Russian capital.

The office of parapsychologist Shahseddin Imanli (from his website).

20 <http://www.echo.az/article.php?aid=97455>, accessed 10 March 2016.

21 <http://www.echo.az/article.php?aid=59766>, accessed 10 March 2016.

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For all their popular success –
or, rather, because of it – ekstrasensy
do not find favour in the eyes of those
who present themselves solely as
“parapsychologists”. In the Soviet
U n i o n , e s p e c i a l l y a ft e r t h e
Khrushchev period, parapsychology,
medicine, and physics mingled and
opened up new fields of research
(Menzel, 2012: 152). A renowned
figure of Soviet parapsychology in the
1960s and 1970s was the ekstrasens
and healer Evgeniya Davitashvili,
better known as Dzhuna. Born in the
southern Russian region of
Dzhuna Davitashvili.
Krasnodar, she left there in the early
1980s for Moscow, or, according to
another version, she was sent to Tbilisi to work as a nurse, where she met her
future Georgian husband. Dzhuna was well known in the former Soviet Union
because she was Leonid Brezhnev’s personal healer – a fact that became public
knowledge.22 Dzhuna, who since 1980 has been living in Moscow, where she
carried out experiments in special clinics, is still an authority in her area of
expertise in the countries of the former Soviet Union. For example, a number of
people advertising their extrasensory and healing powers in Birzha claim to be
followers of her methods. Soviet parapsychology was not unknown in the West
after US parapsychologists Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder attended the
first Soviet Congress of Parapsychology in 1968 and published a book about
their experiences in 1970, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (Menzel,
2012: 180).

Despite presenting themselves as the “real” scientists in charge of this


“precise science”, as one of them told me, the parapsychologists I met in Baku

22 She was not the only healer involved in treating ageing senior leaders of the Communist Party of the

Soviet Union (Lindquist, 2006: 34).

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are desperately seeking legitimisation. As a result, they usually resort to several
stratagems to confirm the merits of their work. Unfortunately, some of these
stratagems are the same as those used by their competitors in the ekstrasens
arena. One such stratagem is to trace a charismatic provenance and to proclaim
themselves the heirs of a family and/or historical continuity. For example, one of
them (informant 1) touched on some links in his native region (Nakhichevan)
with the Sumerians and some tribes who came from Iraq to Nakhichevan.23
Another one (informant 2) explained that his region is home to St George’s tomb
(Cercis türbesi), whose construction, he contended, was initiated by his
grandfather when he became the secretary of the local section of the
Communist Party of Azerbaijan. The monument, he recalled, was finally built
only in 1989. He also emphasised his alleged descent from the Seyyeds, i.e. the
descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Both informants referred to a
grandfather, a grandmother, and/or an aunt who was endowed with healing
powers, was an expert in herbs or able to read the bones, a çöpçü, or a çıldaqcı.
They did not dismiss these popular practices, which, they say, are a “branch” of
parapsychology. This might be a way of embedding their roles in a traditional
framework that seems more acceptable and within the understanding of a wider
public.

These parapsychologists can be regarded as fairly marginal in Azerbaijani


society more widely, and in the “curing of body and soul” market especially. The
way in which I contacted them is fairly telling. Informant 1 was advertising his
services in the newspaper Birzha in the “medical services” section. He said that
he was enthusiastic about my research topic, agreeing to a recorded interview
that lasted almost three hours, which he seemed to perceive as a unique
opportunity for him to disseminate his knowledge. I reached informant 2
through a simple search on the Internet. This parapsychologist was actually
working in Baku at the Institute for Invention and Business, which offers a very
wide range of courses ranging from how to repair a mobile phone or a computer
to hairdressing, manicure and accountancy. Although he claimed to have many
students from Azerbaijan, Russia, and occasionally Turkey or even China, he

23 It is possible that my informant hinted at his descent from some Turkmen tribes, but this was not

clear by the end of the interview.

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apparently experienced great difficulty in recruiting enough people to form a
new group of students, and I never managed to meet any of them. Both
informants obviously suffered from a lack of scientific recognition – even any
recognition at all – since the medical circles they identify themselves with do
not recognise them as equals; at the same time, they have a poor opinion of
notorious people like Galina Baghirova or The Clash of Ekstrasensy participants
in general, who, according to them, are engaged in unimportant matters, but are
much more attractive to a wider audience:
I learnt both traditional and non-traditional medicine, although professors and
academicians don’t want to accept me. I used to approach TV channels, but I
haven’t been doing that for three years now because they don’t want to hear.
Even people like psychologists [and] psychiatrics don’t; they think
parapsychologists are liars. Well, [the fact] that simple people don’t understand
is one thing, but when psychiatrists don’t understand what parapsychology is ….
In addition, if we look at the roots of psychology and psychiatry, it all comes
from parapsychology. The roots are in parapsychology. … As for TV programmes
like The Clash, well, I think you should not show your divine abilities [on such
programmes], because this would be a sin, or actually not a sin, but a mistake. …
Then you should not speak about the future like “this or that will happen to you”
like Djuna [Davitashvili] or Vanga, or other ekstrasensy (informant 1, December
2014).

Parapsychology is a far-reaching science; you must know a lot of things in a lot


of areas. I work on my own because I don’t trust the others. They may know a
branch, but not the others. There is psychotherapy, biotherapy [counts on his
hands]. … But it is not recognised as a science, although this is the science of the
21st century! It is not a minor task! (informant 2, April 2015).

While they insist on the scientific nature of their approach, their answers
were full of religious references, which at first sight might appear to be fairly
contradictory:
People know well what we are dealing with; for me, I’m dealing with a science
that is necessary to everybody: I’m not meddling in religion and politics. Science
will not replace other domains. … Some people use parapsychology in breach of
the laws of religion; I’m just observing [them]. The law of God is humanity’s

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greatest programme. If you follow it, then it becomes an enormous cosmic
programme24 (informant 2).25

You see, the problem is that sometimes parapsychology overlaps with religion.
… Wherever I live, wherever I look, I see Allah. … All rivers do flow to the
ocean; 26 it doesn’t matter: the most important [thing] is to recognise the Very
High. … Sometimes people ask what my religion is and I say that I work on
religion because religion is a cosmic conscience. … This is all about abstract
healing. But our people [nashi = Azerbaijanis] are not ready for that yet …. The
fact is that we are in a Muslim country; it is not developed that much yet. … In
addition, if we look at the roots of psychology and psychiatry, it all comes from
parapsychology. The roots are in parapsychology.

Interviewer: Then it’s not vice versa?

No. … The level of recognition of parapsychology is very weak. Even


psychologists do not believe in God, whereas psychology is the science of the
soul! This is the reason why parapsychology may be done only under the aegis
of God. We should rely on Him. We should rely on Him wherever we look. This is
the goal of true parapsychology (informant 1).

These comments need to be interpreted on several levels. Firstly,


parapsychologists tend to adopt both a syncretic and holistic approach in a way
that undoubtedly recalls the New Age methods and alternative therapies in the
West. They mix a variety of references originating in science, religion,
mythology, the cure of the body and soul, and so on. Also, broadly speaking,
they do not treat an isolated disease, but the whole person from various
perspectives (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual) in relation to his/her
environment (Hanegraaf, 1997: 43). Secondly, their practices (just like those of
ekstrasensy and other similar practitioners) rely on the “natural affinity”
between healing and religion (Hanegraaf, 1997: 44) in that both are meant to
deal with human weakness and suffering. Thirdly, the constant reference to

24 My interviewee was answering one of my questions related to the death of Etibar Mammedaliyev, a
parapsychologist and founder of the Union of Parapsychologists of Azerbaijan, who was murdered in
1999, along with his two sons. While the murder was allegedly committed by the so-called Army of Islam
(in all likelihood a criminal group), the reasons for it have never been revealed.

25 Informant 1 mentioned arguments he had with the staff of a newspaper for which he was writing:
they had accused him of being an “unbeliever” (kafir).

26 Natural analogies are very widespread in the cultic milieu.

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religion may also be interpreted from several perspectives. While these
practitioners do not see any discrepancy between their practices and religion, to
some extent this stance may be identified as a discursive strategy meant to
attract (or, at least, not to discourage) potential clients whose religious values
are perceived by these practitioners – or truly are – as possibly contradicting the
approach promoted by parapsychology. One could argue that the cure of body
and soul addresses everybody, not only believers, but the fact is that
parapsychologists are offering their services first and foremost on the spiritual
market, not on the political market.27 Therefore, they need to make their
activities attractive both to convinced believers and to people at different stages
of a spiritual quest.

Informant 1 clearly linked his difficulties in developing his practice in


Azerbaijan with what he sees as the lack of openness of Muslim Azerbaijani
society. While this argument might be perceived as a way of explaining one’s
inability to appeal to clients, other practitioners, like Isa Baghirov, also use it. In
addition, presenting parapsychology as an elite activity that is beyond the grasp
of ordinary people tends to have a contradictory effect, since its whys and
wherefores remain beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of people.
Instead, most parapsychologists are inclined to dismiss popular esoteric culture,
while, to their great displeasure, some people advertising divination services
refer to parapsychology together with other practices like astrology, divination
or folk-healing.

Popular “occulture”

Ekstrasens offers services in order to be rid of the Evil Eye, damage, rumours,
etc. Correction of biological poles. (1995)

We offer the services of an ekstrasens. Cure of headaches, tension, eye illnesses,


digestive system, rheumatism, kidney troubles, post-surgery aches, nervous
illnesses, improvement of memory capacities, cure of under- or overweight,
sugar diabetes, etc. (1995)

27 And even this assertion is questionable since, as mentioned earlier, some politicians are known to use

the services of ekstrasensy, as do the police and KGB. This has become the focus of a specific literature,
e.g. Greyg (2012).

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According to Djuna Davitachvili’s “help yourself ” method, a student of DD offers
training courses in care [lechenie] and self-care. In the course of the training the
opening of hands and of the third eye occurs. I make predictions for the future,
help heal wounds, witchcraft, Evil Eye; I correct the patient’s bioenergetics.
(1995)

White and black peasant magic in the old style …. Protect [you] from damage,
Evil Eye … protect business in a powerful way; relief from anxiety [çıldaqcı],
depression, tiredness; improvement of self-confidence. (1999)

Professional physician, parapsychologist, healer [celitel] makes a diagnosis and


guarantees to cure all kinds of illnesses (including the most difficult to cure) by
means of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, acupuncture, massage, manual
therapy, bioenergetics therapy. (2000, under “medical services”)

Just one month! The head of the “parapsychology” section in the newspaper
Women’s World, Nurida Mamedova, will make a new year’s divination and
predictions for 2001. (2000)

Ekstrasensy parapsychologist from the School of Moscow, magician by descent,


welcomes you to a seance of divination and predictions for the future. (2014)

Gift of clairvoyance. Magic of ancient Persians. Kabbalah. Strong energetics. ...


Psychological consultations, psychosomatic medicine. Astrologist, tarot. (2014)

Clairvoyant Karina, participant in the Russian TV show The Clash of


Ekstrasensy, really works miracles! (2014)28

These advertisements published in the newspaper Birzha (which is


exclusively dedicated to advertising) from 1995 to 2014 testify to the diversity of
practices and activities associated with parapsychology and ekstrasensy. Until
the early 2000s these advertisements were included in the “miscellaneous” and
“services” sections, but then a section dealing with “divination” was introduced,
in which they all appear nowadays. Reading these advertisements, one can
easily understand why the parapsychologists I met feel cheated, since many
practitioners describe themselves in the same advertisement as
parapsychologists while also offering many other varied services usually related
to divination, magic and traditional healing. That said, even if their
advertisements find themselves in the “divination” section, healers tend to
present their interventions in medical-scientific terms without emphasising the

28 See also Lindquist (2006: 37–38) for Russian advertisements that typically mirror these.

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use of rituals, while magicians and ekstrasensy tend to stress the rituals they use
(see also Lindquist, 2006: 26). References to alterity and foreign magical
practices (Lindquist, 2006: 39) – in one of the cases quoted above the Persians
and Kabbalah, but it could equally be the gypsies or Egyptian magic – are
extremely popular. Since “licensed parapsychologists” consider that they
represent the real science, these competitors are a serious concern for them; all
the more so because such competitors continually refer to the “scientific
establishment” (Lindquist, 2006: 37). Advertising in the “medical services”
section therefore represents a part of their legitimisation strategy, as can be seen
from the advertisement placed by informant 1: “Parapsychologist, psychologist,
healer by heritage. Consultation, diagnosis and healing of the soul and the
body.” As he would tell me later, “For me, I am only in the ‘medical services’
section. The others, they do some divination, that kind of stuff, but I am engaged
only in parapsychology. My job is to heal people in order for them to evolve.”

It is doubtful whether many people consult these advertisements since, as


several people in Baku stated, “if they need to advertise, it means that they are
not very good”. But at least the advertisements’ publication enables researchers
to note that many different influences mingle in the realm of popular esoteric
culture: Islam; superstition; folk medicine, including Russian folk medicine and
traditional practices like çöpçülük; magic; and, last but not least, esoteric
practices like the Kabbalah. In Azerbaijan, as elsewhere, the esoteric approach,
its symbols and elements are often associated with traditional and folk
practices, beliefs, and superstitions.

Basically, esotericism involves emphasising the universal nature of a


precise symbol while looking for corresponding symbols in other traditions, in a
process of revealing without popularising (Riffard, 1999: x–xii). It establishes
correspondence between heaven and earth, human beings and the cosmos, and
so forth. Much of contemporary popular esotericism pretends to make occult
elements accessible to a vast number of people, and this is the main argument
of practitioners. In effect, however, the term “esoteric” eventually came to have
no precise meaning and became synonymous with “alternative
religiosity” (Mayer, 1993: 50).

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Magic and astrology appear as occult arts par excellence (Riffard, 1997:
xii). Astrology is, of course, an important part of popular esoteric culture
because it appears in all contexts and addresses universal topics (Morin et al.,
1981: 89–90). In Russia, Pavel and Tamara Globa have popularised this practice
on The Fifth Wheel (Pyatoe koleso), a St Petersburg TV channel. Pavel Globa had
taught astrology underground since the 1970s, but was charged with anti-Soviet
agitation and consequently imprisoned (Belyaev, 2012: 261). The Globas
presented astrology as a form of ancient esoteric knowledge related to
Zoroastrianism (Belyaev, 2012: 261). For astrologers in Azerbaijan, it is much
easier to use Zoroastrianism as a reference since it was a state religion when the
territory currently known as Azerbaijan was under Sassanid rule, before the
Arab conquest in the middle of the seventh century. References to
Zoroastrianism are therefore very widespread among Azerbaijani occult circles,
and Zarathustra is an especially popular figure.29 For example, the chief editor
of the main (and sole) publication in Azerbaijan dedicated entirely to popular
esoteric culture, Qoroskop, emphasised the essential character of Zoroastrian
philosophy in his approach. Zoroastrianism, he explained, as the first source of
astrology even before the Egyptians, can play a significant role in deciphering
the modern world. Yet Zoroastrianism is definitely not the only subject of this
fortnightly newspaper,30 which – typically for a popular esoteric publication –
touches on a large number of topics.

Presented as “The newspaper of reason and prognosis” (İdrak və


proqnozlar qəzeti), Qoroskop deals with astrology and horoscopes (flower
horoscope, fish horoscope, Chinese horoscope, etc.), historical topics, vanished
civilisations, parapsychology and bio-energy, magic (e.g. the magical powers of
traditional carpets), news from the world press and from Facebook, and – last
but not least – Islam. Articles and news about Islam deal overwhelmingly31 with

29 Although it contains many esoteric elements, Zoroastrianism cannot be considered to be a form of

esotericism as such (Riffard, 1997: 520).

30 Whose average circulation ranges from 3,000 to 8,000 readers, compared to 9,800 for the daily

newspapers Azərbaycan (pro-government) and Azadlyq (opposition).

31 Possibly even exclusively, but I could not consult all the newspaper’s editions.

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Shia-related topics such as the Shia holy places (Kerbala, Najaf, etc.32) and Shia
celebrations. Even Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, a well-known and once turbulent cleric
who is also a figure in the struggle for freedom of conscience in Azerbaijan, has
advertised from time to time in Qoroskop; e.g. to call for believers to come to his
mosque on a particular day of Shia celebration.

Broadly speaking, Shia Islam promotes the discipline of the secret (sirr),
the practice of dissimulation (kitmân), and the code/law of silence (taqiyya) that
have all been historically necessary to protect the faith, and is thus fertile
ground for the dissemination of esoteric beliefs (Riffart, 1997: 1128). In Baku
and the Absheron Peninsula, which are predominantly Shia areas, this
background seems to intermingle with traditional practices strongly associated
with the local traditions of the Absheron region, e.g. traditional healers like the
çöpçü and çıldaqcı (see above). Nevertheless, Shia references are also fairly
commonly used in other regions, including for divination purposes. For
instance, I witnessed a divination session (fal in Azerbaijani) in a western
Azerbaijani region where the clairvoyant said in a typical Shia way “Ya Ali, Ya
Muhammad” before laying her cards on the table. After that she started reciting
what was supposed to be a prayer in Arabic, but seemed much more like
incomprehensible chanting. In the Azerbaijani context, these popular practices
and beliefs are associated with rural areas, while parapsychology, pretty much
as used to be the case for psychology in the West, is associated with urban areas.
As I was told by someone in the same area:
Parapsychology, this is urban stuff, this is to cure the nerves, the head. But you
also have the ekstrasensy. The çıldaqcı and the çöpçü, we really believe in
[them]: even in hospitals they say we should go and see them. Some
Azerbaijanis who live in Russia, well they come back here especially for that.

Popular occult practices are anchored in both the past and present. Like
magic, they are viewed as being able to bring into balance a disenchanted world
ruled by scientific rationality that separates reality into isolated fragments
(Champion, 2000: 526). More than a worldview as such, popular occulture is
rather a resource on which people draw, and a reservoir of ideas, beliefs,

32 Sometimes in a very practical way, e.g. to inform believers that they no longer need a visa to visit

various pilgrimage sites in Iran (no. 16(358), 16–31 August 2015, p. 3).

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practices and symbols (Partridge, 2004: 84). All these practices and activities
were already present during Soviet times and were not prohibited as such,
although they were not overtly advertised (Lindquist, 2006: xv). What changed
after the collapse of the Soviet Union was the wider offering of services that
stressed individual well-being. What is proposed is a single service for a single
person. In the same way, astrology is by definition individual and therefore does
not take place in groups, except for horoscopes published in newspapers and
magazines. Both parapsychology and popular esoteric culture stress
individuality in a society where collectivism has dominated for years and where
kinship solidarities still play a crucial role in interpersonal relationships. Unlike
these practices, which are exclusively oriented towards the “self ”, New Religious
Movements (NRMs) like the Hare Krishna movement attract individuals who are
involved in a personal quest, but as part of a communal group with specific
rules and a specific meeting place. (As such, they also offer researchers easier
access for fieldwork.)

The Hare Krishna community in Baku

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON; Vaishnavy


in Russian) – the official name of the Hare Krishnas – was the first NRM in
Russia to launch a fully fledged advertising campaign in the early 1990s,
although it had been functioning underground for more than a decade. Its
founder, Bkhativedanta Swami Prabhupada, visited Russia for the first time in
1971. In the aftermath of this visit, underground groups were created (Menzel,
2012), and ISKCON's text Bhagavad-Gita as It Is started circulating as a samizdat
(illicit underground publication circulated among dissident groups). Until the
backlash of 1973 after Soviet–Indian relations deteriorated, when yoga was
declared a “Trojan horse of Indian idealism” and therefore incompatible with
the official ideology (Menzel, 2012: 166), many basic texts on Eastern religions,
Buddhism, Hinduism, and yoga philosophy and practice were available to the
Soviet public. Hence, many of the Soviet followers of Krishna throughout the
Soviet Union came to ISKCON through their early interest in yoga and India.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, ISKCON started advertising extensively on TV,

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on the streets and in the underground metro (Shterin 2012, 291), pretty much in
the same way as in the West. A substantial part of the Baku community’s
founders and important current members claimed to have first encountered
Krishna’s ideas in this way in Moscow, Kiev or Baku. However, I was unable to
ascertain whether this was part of a discursive myth regarding their random
(but significant) encounter with Krishna, or if it really did happen in this way.33
For example, one of the founding members of the Baku community recounted:
I went to Moscow, to the Blokhine Institute, for treatment – I had cancer. When I
went out it had rained a lot. I was on a street, I looked at the ground, and in the
gutter I saw a picture that was being carried along by the flowing water; it was a
picture of Jesus. So I took it, I dried it on my coat, and put it in the pocket of my
coat. This was in 1988. And here, in the metro, I came across a grandmother
who was distributing Krishna’s books as samizdats. She told me, “If you buy this
book, you will be happy and healthy forever”.

For his part, the current head of the Hare Krishna temple recalled the
more traditional way in which he became interested in ISKCON's activities:
I went to Kiev in 1993 to study economics. My grandmother, for example, used
to pray, but I wasn’t interested in religion at all. I was interested in sciences, arts;
at school I had a “philosophical mood” (filosofskoe nastroenie in Russian). I
wanted to understand religion, but as a science. So in Kiev some people had set
up a stall on a street with some books; this was very widespread at that time. I
had a look and I bought The Science of Self-recognition (Nauka samosoznanija).
I didn’t even know what it was; I just felt attracted by the title. If I had known
that it was about religion, I wouldn’t have bought it. When I returned to my
students’ residence I started reading at 4 p.m. [and continued] until 3 a.m.!

While currently Hare Krishnas are prevented from spreading their beliefs
openly in Turkey, they were first registered in Soviet Azerbaijan in 1989.34 The
first foreign gurus, who presented themselves as yoga practitioners, visited Baku
as tourists in the late 1980s and stayed a few times in one of the well-known
Intourist hotels, the only hotels that were officially accredited to host foreigners
in the Soviet Union, as one of the community’s founders explained to me:

33 For converts, life narratives are a norm (Roy, 2008: 38).

34 Ironically, followers in contemporary Turkey follow exactly the same route as their predecessors in

the Soviet Union, practising their faith under the guise of engaging in yoga activities.

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We invited two gurus, one from India, one from Britain, without mentioning the
real purpose of their visit. They were dressed in normal clothes. We booked two
luxury rooms for them at the Intourist hotel, but they slept on the floor while the
translator slept in the bed, because … at that time in those hotels non-official
couples used to meet, or high-ranking people met with their lovers, etc. Then we
found a solution because I had a three-room flat where they would stay when
they were in Baku, and I would go and stay at the neighbours’ house with my
daughter. Then I bought a second apartment and there was no longer a problem
(informant 3, Baku, 18 January 2016).

Another person who used to be interested in ISKCON activities before


turning to Islam remembered the visit of two followers of Krishna from St
Petersburg to her native Mardakan, a village situated in the suburbs of Baku,
also in the late 1980s. She added that “artists were especially interested” in Hare
Krishna teachings. In the same way, another informant mentioned another
important feature of esoteric knowledge in the post-Soviet space, namely its
elite character.35 It can be argued that the first open followers of Krishna in
Soviet Azerbaijan belonged to the better-off classes in the sense that they had a
substantial social and economic network at their disposal. This, in turn,
endowed them with a social and economic capital that they could use for the
benefit of the organisation. For example, informant 3 further explained that she
used to work as the director of a large silk factory in Baku and was therefore
given some perks, such as a large apartment, which she put at the disposal of
foreign gurus, and the possibility of going abroad, including to India in 1988,
where she discovered yoga. This also made the registration of ISKCON easier
because she could afford to pay bribes, while her connections in the Azerbaijani
administration also helped. Her main argument for being able to register the
organisation in Soviet Azerbaijan was that it had already been registered in
Moscow: “At that time, what had been done in Moscow had to be followed in the
other republics”, as she recalled.

At that time – as is still the case today to a large extent – Moscow was a
metonym for Russia and, beyond, for the centre. Thus, Azerbaijan was the
second Soviet republic after Russia where the devotees of Krishna were officially

35 In the same way, the success of Buddhism and neo-Hinduism in the West is predominantly a middle-

and upper-class phenomenon (Roy, 2008: 47).

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registered. Back then, “everything came through Moscow”, and the community
had only one teacher and two students. The movement’s literature was also
available – and still is predominantly – exclusively in Russian. Not surprisingly,
the first followers were mainly Russian speakers, among them an important
proportion of Russians and Armenians. Due to the war over Nagorno-Karabakh
and because of the socio-economic chaos that plagued Azerbaijan after
independence, these followers left the country for Russia, the United States, or
even Australia, where they found work as architects, etc., which is another sign
of the elite character of ISKCON in Soviet Azerbaijan.36 Until the early 1990s the
community used to gather in an apartment in a distant neighbourhood of Baku,
but then bought a house that used to belong to an Armenian chief of police who
had left the city, in the area of Kara Karayev metro station. In a way, the Hare
Krishnas of Azerbaijan – and, more broadly, of the former Soviet Union – have a
specific history, and even their own martyrology, due to the persecutions they
suffered: when veterans of the community refer to Soviet times, they often speak
of the Krishna followers who were sent to psychiatric hospitals or the detainees
who made rosaries out of breadcrumbs.

Like all NRMs of its kind, ISKCON seems to be much more dynamic than
mainstream religious institutions: a fairly large number of followers of the Baku
temple declared that first and foremost they appreciated the interactive
character of the preaching, which is called “lecturing”. Not only are followers
addressed directly, but they are even encouraged to participate in the “lectures”.
This is undoubtedly a positive factor for people living in a society where
individuals are unable to voice their own ideas or feelings due to family or
community pressures and the repressive nature of the authoritarian political
regime. This state of affairs is further aggravated by the persistence of Soviet
attitudes that leave little room for people to express their own opinions.

ISKCON followers gather every Sunday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The ritual
starts with a prayer and a meditation to “leave the past behind and let the future
take care of itself ”. The lecture is given by an experienced member of the

36 However, this assertion should be balanced by the fact that Russians and Armenians in Baku were

usually well qualified, therefore emigrants were generally also well qualified, whether they were
affiliated to Hare Krishna or not.

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community and lasts for roughly an hour.37 Then followers have a collective
meal, which is also a chance for them to socialise with strangers or converse
with regular visitors. The Hare Krishna community, as a “world-rejecting/
transformative movement”, seeks to build tightly knit spiritual communities
rooted in family and religion (Bromley, 2012: 17, 19). This is why rituals are
designed to stress love, trust, family, community and the collective, and to draw
outsiders into the group (Bromley, 2012: 18). Since the rituals are very informal
compared to those of traditional religions, they lead to individual ways of
celebrating not only Krishna, but globally the joy of “being there”. This was
reflected in the way in which people sang and danced during the third part of
the Sunday services (after the lecture and dinner) I had the chance to attend: the
men formed a circle in front of the altar, while the women were swinging their
arms and bodies back and forth.

Hare Krishna Temple in Baku, Winter 2015-2016.

37 On the two occasions when I attended he was a Baku-born Russian and lectured in Russian.

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The first time I went to the temple, on 18 January 2016, approximately 70
people were present, among them four children. Those who attended seemed
really diverse, while some people obviously came out of curiosity. A couple of
elderly men even wore the traditional Muslim hat while continuously fingering
their rosaries. The turnover of attendees was fairly high, with people going in
and out regularly, and sometimes returning after leaving for a while. The
majority of people were dressed in casual clothes, but some were dressed in
traditional Indian clothes. For some girls, a visit to the temple appeared to be an
occasion for wearing fancy Indian clothes and jewellery. One of them was
drawing on her friend’s hands with henna during the lecture. Another was
wearing earrings containing a symbol to ward off the Evil Eye. They were
chatting with one another fairly loudly. During the dancing and singing session
they were the most enthusiastic, together with many other followers, including
an elderly Muslim (Shia) woman who had visited Mecca and virtually all the
Shia pilgrimage sites in Iran and Iraq. She described how she went to various
places of worship in Baku (mosques and churches) and how she still went to a
mosque, but insisted that nowhere was the atmosphere as friendly and joyful as
at the Krishna temple, to which she had been coming for ten years.

Even if some people came with friends “just to see”, or because they lived
in the neighbourhood and the temple represented a kind of weekly attraction,
most of those present were guided by an individual approach unlike that of
traditional religious communities, and their motivations for attending were
likely very different. Beyond the quest for a sense of meaning, which is generally
at the core of the individual religious process, curiosity could also have been an
incentive. A couple of people clearly came to benefit from the free meals the
temple provided, while a group of young men who arrived at the end of the
ceremony might well have been attracted by the possibility of meeting girls in a
place where community control was presumably less strict than in other places.
Of course, motivations for attending may also be mixed.

In a society that had experienced the sudden and rapid loss of shared
meanings, symbols, and values, and had to cope simultaneously with war,
economic hardships, and social upheaval, an NRM like the Hare Krishna
“constructs alternative mythic narratives, offers novel interpretations of the

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human condition, and challenges established logic” (Bromley, 2012: 17). Many
people I met in the Baku Hare Krishna community explained that they were
looking for answers to their questions about life and only found them in
ISKCON. A veteran member said that she felt helpless after the intervention of
the Soviet army in Baku on 20 January 1990. She was also in need of answers
regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The current chair of the temple
explained that he was interested in philosophy even before he started reading
literature related to Hare Krishna in Kiev:
I was asking myself: “Why are there rich and poor people, differences, beautiful
and ugly people? How should I understand diversity?” (Kak ponyat’
raznoobrazie?). I don’t like people who say “we are right”; for me, I wanted to be
friends with everybody, no more, no less. And I like this philosophy [Hare
Krishna’s] that answers all my questions (January 2016).

Established religions, especially Islam and its Quran, are considered not
to be sufficiently explicit, with too many hidden meanings and complex
elements, whereas the Hare Krishna philosophy is – the community's members
claim – a science. As a belief system, however, ISKCON does not determine the
way of life of the majority of its followers in Baku. Many of them mentioned that
they were in search of a “practical religion” that would help them make the right
choices in their daily lives. For some believers, involvement with the Hare
Krishna movement has been essentially a stage in a transition to what they
were looking for, and eventually found in another religion, like for Fatima:
At that time [mid-1980s] I was working at the local council, in the
administration, so it [religious activities] was prohibited. I was looking for some
sense, some meaning. We were told that there’s no God, that we have no soul –
why? I was asking myself a lot of questions and I had no information, nowhere,
so I was looking for it, as was my husband as well. My parents had at least
explained to me that there’s life after death. I was reading everything,
everything that I could, Gurdjieff of course, etc. Elmira, a colleague, started
talking about Krishna and I became interested. I was already a vegetarian and I
was doing some massages. Finally I distanced myself from it [ISKCON] because I
didn’t like someone putting his own opinions in the texts, or people saying “this
is good, this is not”. Then I came to Islam, but it doesn’t matter: there’s only one
God (January 2016).

Braux – “Occulture” and alternative forms of religiosity in contemporary Azerbaijan – March 2017 Page 2
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Whereas this might be interpreted as the mere modification of a market in
terms of supply and demand, Fatima’s spiritual path also points to the
individualisation and privatisation of religiosity that have occurred in post-
Soviet societies in the last 25 years.

Hare Krishna Temple in Baku, Winter 2015-2016.

Conclusion

Most studies point at the confusing variety of practices and perspectives


that emerge from “occulture”, New Age, NRMs, and methods of healing and
personal growth in the West. A loose “nebula” (Champion, 1989), they
encompass almost as many forms of praxis as the number of individuals
concerned and are mixed with cultural elements, which accounts for the
inherently dynamic, fluid, and changing nature of religion in the modern era
(Sutcliffe and Gilhus, 2013: 12–13). This is also what the observation of chosen
clusters of alternative forms of religiosity in Azerbaijan suggests. While

Braux – “Occulture” and alternative forms of religiosity in contemporary Azerbaijan – March 2017 Page 2
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traditional beliefs and practices serve as a legitimising tool for practitioners, on
the one hand, and as reassuring local points of reference for ordinary people, on
the other hand, other trends tend to confirm the global tendency of a growing
disconnection between religion and culture (Roy, 2008: 208). This is especially
true of the Hare Krishna movement, whose Hindu practices have been designed
for export and emphasise self-fulfilment (Roy, 2008: 292). That such a
movement could take root in Baku, that ekstrasensy could become famous
thanks to TV broadcasts, or that chic restaurants in Baku offer special brunch
menus during Ramadan also reflects the increasing “marchandisation de
Dieu” (Obadia, 2013) taking place in Azerbaijan, as elsewhere in the world.
Finally, the development of the Azerbaijani spiritual market – be it for
alternative forms of religiosity or so-called “established” religions – cannot be
dissociated from the growing individualisation of faith and related practices
that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this respect, only a micro-
analysis focusing on this process is likely to help capture the complex and subtle
logics related to modern forms of religiosity.

Adeline Braux

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